Former president of india, Dr. Abdul Kalam, whose funeral would take place at his home village today would be remembered for his large heart and brilliant mind.
Dr. Kalam after inaugurating an international conference on child development and disability at New Delhi in 2008, happened to meet some of us in the faculty as he was leaving the conference venue. He turned to us and said, 'come and visit me tomorrow at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Let us talk about our common interest to help children with special needs'.
The arrangements for eight of us to visit him the next afternoon was made by his office and we spent about five hours at the Rashtrapati Bhavan with him. He took us around the garden, where there was a meditation seat overlooking the garden and the distant panaroma. He spent about half an hour each day sitting in that place in recollection and prayer. For him, prayer was recalling life in gratitude and growing in inner preparedness to love and serve. He took us to the library which was getting digitalised at that time. He showed us around the important and historical rooms of the palatial palace.
The most memorable time was about the three hours of conversation when he patiently listened to the biographical stories of each of us and turned to his own personal story. He recalled a childhood story of his class being taken to the beach near his elementary school in the village. The teacher of mathematics pointing to the vast sky seems to have said, you learn numbers by counting the stars in the sky at night. It was this fascinating sight of the sky that stimulated him to study science that would take him into research later!
He told me at that time he was keen to visit CMC Vellore, which he did later.
He served his nation with dignity and grace!
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